Four Ways in Vain
by Bubonic Woodchuck
Summary: Duty is, he thinks, a strange word for it. It is not, after all, as if he must do his part in this war." Gong Su wonders where his loyalties lie; Langford James comes along for the ride. Spoilers for Empire of Ivory, written before Victory of Eagles.


_Written several months ago for a good friend of mine, as part of a fic exchange. MASSIVE SPOILERS for Empire of Ivory. Written before Victory of Eagles was released, so there are some discrepancies as to the fate of Temeraire's crew – but nothing that can't be overlooked. In any case, you have been warned!_

_It's been a while since I last read Throne of Jade, so I can't recall at the moment if Ms. Novik ever explicitly stated where Gong Su is from, though she has mentioned his disdain for northern cuisine. For the purposes of this fic, I'm assuming he hails from Guangdong ._

Disclaimer: I do not own Temeraire, Gong Su, Volatilus, or Langford James. All of them belong to Naomi Novik, whose boots I am not fit to lick.

* * *

_Pure wine costs, for the golden cup, ten thousand coppers a flagon,  
And a jade plate of dainty food calls for a million coins.  
I fling aside my chopsticks and cup, I cannot eat nor drink.  
I pull out my sword and peer four ways in vain.  
I would cross the Yellow River, but ice chokes the ferry;  
I would climb the Tai-hang Mountains, but the sky is blind with snow.  
I would sit and poise a fishing-pole, lazy by a brook,  
But I suddenly dream of riding a boat, sailing for the sun...  
Journeying is hard,  
Journeying is hard.  
There are many turnings --  
Which am I to follow?  
I will mount a long wind some day and break the heavy waves  
And set my cloudy sail straight and bridge the deep, deep sea._

-Li Bai

* * *

It has been five days since anyone has heard from William Laurence and Lung Tien Xiang.

The days have settled into something almost approaching a routine. Gong Su will wake up and cook for those dragons who are interested in cooked food. These are limited mostly to Iskierka, who has developed a taste for spices, and sometimes Lily and Maximus, who Gong Su is given to understand were close to Lung Tien Xiang before everything went to pieces.

Afterwards, he will go down to the docks and speak to the few Chinese servants employed there; two of them are from his home province, and it does his heart good to hear the dialect again. They may be only servants, but he is not much better, and he will listen to the sharp, angular tones, so much more expressive than the Mandarin of the north, where he can. It is a long way from England to Guangzhou.

He always returns to the covert before dusk to cook supper for the dragons. They are not as picky as Lung Tien Xiang was – is – but he feels a need to try something new every few days nonetheless. It would not be proper to do otherwise. He has always fancied himself good at improvisation, and he does well with what he is given: pork sliced into strips and roasted with a reasonably good _char siu_ sauce, or stuffed into oversized _lap cheung_, or great dishes of _lou mei_ (though the idea of stewed offal is inexplicably off-putting to the curious aviators). There is a sort of obligation about it – a duty to them, though he certainly does not know them very well, except for Iskierka.

Duty is, he thinks, a strange word for it. It is not, after all, as if he must do his part in this war.

The general consensus in the covert is that Laurence will be hanged if the French do not first guillotine him for being a spy, and that it is a damned shame. Nevertheless, it will happen, and the aviators will be powerless to stop it. Granby thinks otherwise, of course, and so do Lily's and Maximus's captains, whose names Gong Su can never remember, but personally he thinks that such protesting will do little good. Laurence is as good as dead, and Lung Tien Xiang will not fight without him, and so will probably be sent to one of the horrible breeding grounds across the sea (though Gong Su shudders at the thought; it is as good as blasphemy in his eyes).

* * *

"So why are you still here?"

Gong Su does not think he has heard the question correctly at first. He blinks up at Langford James. "Sorry?"

James, at least, has the good grace to look somewhat abashed as he snatches an apple from the barrel near the roasting-pit. "Beg your pardon; I didn't mean to phrase it quite like that – "

"No, is all right." Gong Su turns back to the sheep he is roasting for Volatilus. To be honest, he rather likes it when people speak plainly; it is easier to understand. Thankfully, aviators generally dispense with formalities, and James is certainly no exception; in fact, it is one of the reasons Gong Su rather likes the courier. "I do not think I hear you first time. You were saying?"

"What I meant to ask," resumes James indistinctly, through a mouthful of apple, "is if you've got anything tying you down here. You aren't actually part of the Corps, are you?"

Gong Su raises an eyebrow, but speaks before James can apologize again. "No, you are right. I am not in the Corps."

Nor, he thinks, does he have any desire to join. He mostly avoids the intense debates that take place in the covert about loyalty to this country (for the aviators speak of little else these days, given the current events). He has never sworn fealty to their king, and does not intend to do so. England is not his home, nor will he ever consider it such.

"You must be terribly bored here," says James suddenly, taking another bite of his apple, and again Gong Su is taken by surprise. "If I couldn't do anything but cook, I'd go absolutely mad."

Gong Su has never quite thought of it that way before. Boredom is perhaps a good word for it – trapped in a covert with little to do besides cook, and the other aviators paying him little mind besides, though he honestly cannot say he minds that they never speak to him. He is rather used to it. Before Laurence left (because it is easier to think of it as _left_), very few people spoke to him to begin with; now, almost no-one speaks to him at all. He understands that. It is, after all, quite easy to forget the foreigner with the odd notions about cooking food for dragons – the one who used to be on Laurence's crew. Better to pretend he doesn't exist.

(Not unlike Laurence himself these days, thinks Gong Su, and feels somewhat guilty for the thought.)

"I like to cook," he says, a little defiantly, and James laughs.

"I never said you didn't! And if Volly likes what you cook, I can't very well say anything against it, can I?"

Gong Su privately thinks that James's dragon will eat anything, raw or cooked, if it was at one point in its life four-legged and furry, but he refrains from saying that out loud and only smiles and protests, as is polite.

"It is true," he says when he has protested enough. "There is little for me to do here – "

"You could always return to China," suggests James. "Have you thought of that before?"

"No."

But that is a lie. Has he, he asks? Of course he has, ten thousand times over. But he cannot truly say that he would return. Even if he could, he would not know how to return with his pride intact.

"You don't really want to go back, do you."

Of all the things Gong Su is expecting, it isn't that. "Excuse me?"

The courier manages to look oddly perceptive for all that he has at least half an apple stuffed into his right cheek. "It's your duty to stay here, isn't it, even though you aren't actually in the Corps? You would have left by now otherwise, wouldn't you? There are ways to get back to China; I'm sure you've thought of a few by now."

Gong Su has to think for a moment before replying, and not just because his immediate response would be in the wrong language. Is it his duty to stay here? It is true; he has no loyalty to the Corps or to England. Sometimes he even wonders why there is so much fuss over such a simple matter as an Emperor. In his opinion, Europe might be better off unified – then the government could turn its attention to truly important matters, such as the horrid state in which dragons here are kept (though, of course, he dare not state these opinions out loud. Napoleon Bonaparte is evidently no Liu Bei).

So why does he remain? He thinks he knows the answer, but to put it into words is a different matter entirely.

He has simply been through too much with William Laurence to feel no loyalty to him. Farcical as he once believed the captain's adoption into the imperial family to be, Gong Su cannot say now that Laurence does not deserve the title. The rest of the crew may be ignorant, tea-ruining barbarians (a rather petty part of him still cannot forgive them for that), but Laurence at least has demonstrated the true qualities of a _tien lung_ companion. Limited as his contact with the captain has been, Gong Su has come to like – and even respect – him a great deal over the course of their travels through Europe and Africa.

And it is, ultimately, not England that Gong Su serves, but Lung Tien Xiang. One is not released from the service of a _tien lung_ simply because the _tien lung_ is not present. It would not happen in the Emperor's court, and it will not happen here. It is not only a matter of common sense, it is a matter of honor – both his own and that of his family.

If the French do not execute Lung Tien Xiang, he will be taken to a breeding ground, for Gong Su knows that Lung Tien Xiang will never consent to fight against England. If that is the case, then Gong Su will leave the covert and follow him there, blasphemy though it is; it is not, after all, desertion, as he is not part of the Corps. But until he sees with his own eyes that Lung Tien Xiang is dead, Gong Su knows he will never begin the long journey home.

And yet, in a way, it is all right, even if the pebble he threw at Jiayu _guan_ never bounced back. What matters is that he is here, now, waiting for Lung Tien Xiang's and Laurence's return. But how can he explain this to James?

"You are right," he says at last, and now it is James's turn to look surprised (perhaps it was less perception and more lucky guessing that led the courier to his conclusion). "I do not truly wish to return. I stay because of Temeraire." He half-smiles, a little nervously; it is far too simple an explanation, but to explain more would be to complicate things. "Does that make sense to you?"

He is oddly gratified when James smiles back.

"All the sense in the world."


End file.
